House of Sand and Secrets

by Cat Hellisen

  Jannik was right. I have become a House pawn. And even as I recognise the truth, I still look about me, wishing that a rabbit hole could appear and I could crawl away. What am I thinking – walking into a mess like this and destroying all I’ve worked toward?

  Oh, Felicita, my dead brother’s voice sneers in my head. When do you ever think?

  You don’t know me, I silence him. It’s true. Owen never took the time to find out the kind of person I was, what I wanted. So why am I allowing his memory to mock and mould me? Grow a Gris-damned spine, Felicita. Stop caring about the Houses, about the game, and the rules.

  People have died. That’s what’s important here.

  There is no point in hiding my intentions with this woman. She has the stony menace of someone who brooks no argument and who does not react kindly to insubordination. By MallenIve law, I stand far higher than this woman in her watchtower can ever hope to reach, and I use that as a crutch.

  “You have the advantage,” I say. “I confess I do not exactly how to address you. My apologies in advance for any offence I may cause you in my ignorance.”

  The slightest approximation of a smile twitches her mouth then is gone. “Well, you certainly know how to speak prettily, I’ll give you that. What is it you want?” She means to keep me off-balance and subtly refuses to give me her name. Too late now to ask the wray who led me here.

  I plunge in, tired of fighting political battles. I get enough of that in the dinner chambers of MallenIve. “It’s about the body.”

  She raises one eyebrow, and the perfect graceful sweep of it reminds me of someone – although who, I cannot quite place.

  We wait out the silence, neither giving ground. Finally, I let her win. “The body the Hoblings found in the heaps. I’m quite certain that the news will have reached you by now.” I pause and smile thinly. “And if it hasn’t, then I am distressed to have to be the one to bring you such ill-tidings.”

  “No ill-tidings,” she says. “It wasn’t one of mine.”

  “You’re certain?”

  She turns her back on me and makes her way behind her impeccable desk to flip open a leather-bound ledger. “I can assure you–.” Her words are punctuated by the flick of heavy river-paper. “–that all of my people are present and accounted for. I always know where my own are.”

  “So you have no idea who it might have been?” There’s one more rookery I could go to, but the Fallingmirror section is on the farthest outskirts of the city, and from what little I’ve understood of the trade, not worth the effort. They have only a handful of working wray.

  She closes the book with a thud and stares at me. A faint frown puckers at her forehead, a neat little bird’s wing of uncertainty. “I didn’t say that.”

  “Well, what exactly–”

  She silences me by pushing a piece of paper across the table. Four names are written in a cramped, neat hand. The names of Lammer Houses of MallenIve, although the only one of any particular rank is Eline.

  “What’s this?” I touch my index finger to one corner of the page, pinning the curling edge down.

  “These are the names of Houses who have recently done business with me,” she replies. The implication is that they have not been her usual customers.

  I think of the predatory way Carien talked about the bats, their skin and their magic. Cold prickles up my spine. “May I take this?”

  She nods.

  “Thank you. I believe that concludes our business.”

  Her thin lips are pressed even tighter together and she does nothing more than clip her head ever so slightly downward. I fold the paper over and over until it is in a neat small square. With this in hand, I turn my back on her raking stare, and make my way alone down to the now-empty foyer.

  As I close the glass doors behind me and make my way to my waiting carriage, I am quite certain that the head of the Splinterfist rookery is watching me from her turret. Even though I have walked out of her domain with something, I do not think this has been any kind of victory.

  Near my own coach stands a little pleasure carriage drawn by a small yellow grey nilly. The insignia on the coach door is a black silhouette of a bird on a daisy yellow background. The heavy beak is unmistakable. Rutherook, then. I tighten my hand about the piece of paper the head of Splinterfist gave me, and turn slowly to my own coach. The laughing silver dolphins barely stand out against the white wood, but if someone took the time to study my little coach it would be obvious which House it belongs to. I have no head for subterfuge, it seems. I shall have to train myself to be better at this game.

  “Back home, my lady?” the coachman asks, and I start to nod.

  “Oh – no wait!”

  He pauses, about to close the door for me.

  “Take me to the Pelim offices, rather,” I instruct.

  The coachman is well trained and if he feels any confusion at my order, it does not show on his sallow face. He inclines his head. “Certainly.”

  I settle into my seat, rather unsure myself as to what prompted me to change my mind, and why I would choose to go to Jannik’s domain. A part of me wants Jannik to know and to have some pride in me, I suppose. How ridiculous. It’s not as if our marriage is like that.

  My face heats, and to make me think of something other than his expression when I bring him this news, I unfold the wad of paper. Four names. Eline, Rutherook, Karin, and Yew. I repeat them under my breath, until it feels to me that they are branded into my eyes.

  * * *

  The Pelim offices are in a set of sprawling warehouses near the Casabi. The docks are bustling with wherrymen and dock-workers and supervisors and carts and nillies and stray dogs and pickpockets and beggars; a riot of colour and stink. Tea-bells and shouts and the crack of sails and the thump of cargo. Some distance from the worst of the mob the roads branch out and narrow, leading to the storage district. The warehouses are jumbled together like a child’s abandoned collection of wooden blocks. Some tower high, others spread out, others seem to do both at the same time, with levels precariously balanced at odd angles. The Pelim warehouse is one of those, with small useless balconies jutting out on the highest floors. A worker leads me through the bizarre labyrinth until I find Jannik in a small study filled with ledgers and musty paperwork. He is dishevelled and sitting cross-legged on the floor before two vast piles of rotting yellowed papers.

  “Enjoying yourself?” I say to him.

  He looks up, eyes wide in a face streaked with grime. He manages to recover from his surprise at my presence with barely a blink. “I hate whoever last ran these offices. Six months and I’ve made barely a dent in the records. The ones that hadn’t been tossed in the river, that is.” He sets down the papers neatly, straightening the edges before he stands. “Can I help you with something?” he says, as if I am some client who has stumbled into a place they shouldn’t be.

  “I paid a visit to the Splinterfist rookery,” I tell him.

  “Ah.” His face is closed. “Why would you want to do that?”

  “To find out what I could about the dead vampire.”

  He fiddles with the books on his desk, setting them so that their spines are just so. On the top of the pile is a small volume bound in blue-dyed leather, the name picked out in gold lettering. The book is almost shiny in its newness. Traget’s Melancholy Raven.

  “I thought you already had a half-dozen copies of that.” I point to the slim book of verse.

  He shrugs, and runs his fingers on the soft edges, folding them in a little under the pressure. “I bought it as gift,” he mumbles.

  A sharpness stabs through my stomach, and I wince. A gift. For someone with a beautiful cruel smile and lying eyes, I suppose. “Pity the poor fool who has to slog through that just because you think it’s a work of genius.” All that rot about crossing deserts and climbing mountains and slaying dragons for his one true love, when in truth Traget was an asthmatic university head who fell in love with a Minor House daughter and had to woo her with words not
deeds.

  “It is a work of genius.”

  “Hmm.” If a collection of love-sick poetry makes one a genius, then I suppose Jannik is not wrong. I shake my head in pity for whoever Jannik has decided to gift with his affections. I don’t want to think about who it might be, all I know is that knowing this much is a slap. I blink rapidly. I’m always so blind, so stupid, always the last to realize what’s going on around me.

  This is what happened before, with Dash and Jannik passing that damn Prines’ Mapping the Dream between them like it was a heart they had to share. They did more than that. Jannik had fed off him, was more than emotionally bound to him. He could track him through the city, could feel the flavour of Dash’s moods. I wonder what it is like to be so caught up with someone that you can taste the food they eat, dream their desires. I shiver. When Dash and I were together, could Jannik feel that – every sigh and whisper?

  Did he know and hurt? Jannik felt Dash die. Jannik felt his pain and he lived through it anyway, but somehow I never considered it would be the same with pleasure. I was so caught up in my own misery for what I had lost, I tried not to consider everything I took from Jannik. Another thing my brother had the measure of – how selfish I am. That was the last time. I will never take from Jannik again. No matter what it is I want.

  “Jannik?” I make myself say. “I just wanted to make sure you know that our agreement still holds.”

  “Agreement?” He sounds genuinely confused.

  How very awkward. “I did not mean for this marriage to tie you to a dry bed,” I say. Look at me, Owen. Look at me. I’m being so adult about it all. Aren’t you proud? The words spit in my head, but I know that outside I look calm, as if there is nothing I could care less about than Jannik’s little engagements. “You know you have my permission – my understanding – that you can go where you will and with who.”

  “Ah. That agreement.” He stares at the leather-bound book.

  “All I must ask is that you keep whatever relationships you have discreet. It cannot do to give the Houses ammunition to use against us, however slight it may seem.” I am such a hypocrite; when I have just visited vampire whorehouses, and all so that I could make him think I was better than he believed. That I could believe it too.

  He laughs. “You don’t have to tell me this, Felicita. It doesn’t matter. I have a tendency to bestow my affections on those I cannot have and who don’t deserve it. It makes me the very epitome of discreet.” Jannik snaps his attention away from the much-maligned Traget. “So what did your jaunt into the rookeries reveal?”

  So we’re not going to talk about this. I’m relieved. Or at least, I should be. “This.” I hand him the names.

  “And?”

  “The rookery head implied that these are houses who have either recently bought vampires – paid the full silver - or made inquiries towards such an end. It may be somewhere to begin.” I think of the newspaper story, the dead body, faceless and mutilated. It could have been one of those names on the paper who bought him, broke him, and left him to rot. Even more than making Jannik proud of me, I find that I cannot get that image out of my head.

  Sometimes the body has a face.

  “Begin what, exactly?” Jannik holds the paper out, and passes it back to me as if it is something he finds repulsive.

  “To find out what is happening, to bring that poor dead boy a little justice.”

  “Why?”

  I take a step back. His mood has changed direction and he is snapping at me like a cornered street cur. “Because he deserves at least that. And who else will speak for him, or others like him? They are, in their own way, our people.”

  Sometimes that face is Jannik’s.

  “No. Felicita, they are my people. It has nothing to do with you.”

  The words are unexpected. I swallow, half expecting to taste blood as if I have been slapped through the face. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Just the morning-sourness of waking from ill-dreams. “I see.” I fold the paper again, tuck it into my purse. “I will speak with Harun then, perhaps he and Isidro will be more reasonable.” We’ve had a few stilted evenings with them – not enough to call them friends, perhaps, but enough that the first thin bridges are being built. At the very least, Isidro and Jannik are spending more time together in something resembling civil conversation. Although Gris knows what it is they talk about, they speak so softly.

  “Isidro is nothing close to reasonable,” Jannik says. Then he sighs. “Fine. Give me a moment to get my coat and I’ll come with you.”

  PAPER MARRIAGES

  “Does this mean anything to you?” I shove the paper into Harun’s face.

  “Felicita,” Jannik murmurs, “do give us a chance to actually get in the house.”

  He has a point. I draw my hand back and wait as Harun rather mockingly bows to welcome us into his ugly home. “You’re playing at servants, are you?” I ask him.

  “No.” He shuts the door behind us, and the dreary red light of the sunset is replaced by choking gloom. “We’re having troubles again.”

  “Troubles?”

  “The servants tend to make a mass exodus every few months, and then we have to hire new ones. The latest little drama happened just hours ago.” He says each word very carefully, as if he is explaining philosophy to an ignorant child, or trying to hide a slur.

  “What – why would they do that?” We follow Harun to the shabby lounge where he’s more recently taken to entertaining us.

  “Because of me.” Isidro is sitting deep in a fat leather chair, scowling at the fireplace.

  “Overwhelmed by your charm, I assume?” I say as I take my own seat on a beautiful small couch, its wooden legs carved like drake claws.

  Jannik makes a coughing, choking sound, and sits next to me.

  There is a dark patch on the carpet where another couch once stood. And on the wall, a series of squares where the wallpaper is unfaded. Harun must be selling off pieces of his remaining wealth. I heard a rumour that his father had finally cut him off completely unless he takes a wife, but here then is the proof. Perhaps poverty will force him back into eligible status. Gris knows how he’ll explain Isidro to any prospective father-in-law. Perhaps he means to hide the bauble in a basement, and hope everyone forgets he exists.

  Since there are currently no servants left, Harun is pouring drinks, as casually and comfortably as if he were born to it. Since he was not, I assume that trouble with the servants is not exactly an uncommon thing in House Guyin. After we all have a glass of wine, Harun slumps back on one of the mismatched chairs, and doesn’t drink, though he hardly needs to. “What’s this piece of paper you were trying to force down my throat?”

  “It’s about the vampire.” I set my glass down, and smooth open the crumpled list.

  Harun glances at Isidro, who merely raises one shoulder in an indifferent shrug.

  “The dead one,” I say.

  “What of it?” Harun makes no attempt to even look at the names on the creased paper. My courage deflates. Perhaps after all, Jannik is right, and this has nothing to do with me, or even Harun. The vampires do not want me to be their saviour. If anything, they would resent me barging in with my Pelim name, my wealth and my distance, assuming I could change things.

  “These are the names of Houses who may have recently bought vampires.” I swallow, and glance up to catch Harun frowning, his knuckles pressed against his chin. “It might be that they know something of this vampire – who he was. I think we should speak with them.”

  “No.”

  The answer is so abrupt I jerk back. With a snap of irritation at my own display of weakness, I stand and glower down at him. “Why not – you think because you’re here with Isidro that the fate of others doesn’t concern you? That you deserve safety and they don’t?”

  “It’s not like that,” he says. “You know nothing. You come blowing up from Pelimburg, thinking you can change the whole world just because it suits you–”

  “You know nothin
g about me.”

  “Felicita,” Jannik reaches out a hand to calm me, and I shake him off. I am not some little girl to be mollified.

  Isidro gets to his feet with a sweep of his immaculate coat. “If I could have a word?” he says mildly, his eyes focused on Jannik.

  Confusion flits across Jannik’s face, and he drops his hand. He gives me a final glance, his third lids half-lowered in confusion. “Certainly.” House politeness apparently dictates our every move, no matter the circumstances. Perhaps Isidro has his own plans, ones with which he does not trust us Lammers.

  The two vampires leave Harun and myself alone, and the room takes on a cloistered feel as the shadows leap higher, competing with the orange flames.

  Harun goes over to a small drinks butler moulded completely of iridescent sapphire and malachite glass. Even the wheels and pins are glass. It is the work of a very fine master War-Singer and probably cost a fortune. I wonder how long it will be before it disappears to cover Harun’s debts.

  Harun lifts a carafe of mintwhite and removes the faceted stopper, cutting the air with the sharp smell. “Glass?” he says, holding the cut-bottle up so it catches the firelight in streamers of gold and yellow.

  My wine is finished, and Harun looks well the worse for a bottle or two already, but I’ll take my courage where I get it. Handing me drinks is not going to make me change my mind. Someone needs to do something for that dead vamp, and since no-one else seems to care, it will be me. I’ll make Harun agree. How, I don’t know, but there must be some way. “I suppose.”

  He snorts. “Don’t do me any favours.” He pours out two snifters, and walks over to me with one held out as a peace offering.

  I take my glass rather ungraciously.

  “It’s more complicated than you realize,” Harun says.

  This is the sort of line I have heard all my life, when men have tried to tell me what I can or can’t do. “So explain. I’m sure if I apply all my meagre womanly brain to the task and you use very small words I can at least get the gist of it.”